When We Were Kids
by Cameron Claire
Summary: Sometimes your best friend Lea's antics get to be a bit too much.


You are too young to be standing outside this particular bar, but it's barely dawn and you do it every day and you've only had your ass grabbed once.

Lea ambles out, hollering something to whatever barmaid's doing a better job at mothering him than his mother this morning, a stale chunk of bread in one hand and an open rucksack of texts and parchment slung haphazardly over his shoulder. He borderline tackles you because yesterday you said something about how you weren't coming because you hate that he's always late which he is. Again.

He hangs on to you for a minute too long, his chest and wiry arms irritatingly warm against yours and his breath ghosts your ear as he relays some scandalous gossip you're going to forget two seconds from now. And you use the extra time to lean over the bony nubs he calls shoulders and cinch the drawstrings of his bag before he loses another essay you edited the hell out of to the wind.

"C'mon, Isa." He catches you by the hood and drags you down the path toward your education, like you're the resistant one.

You are sleepy, lines creasing the space above your nose like a scar. You let him tug you along. You tell yourself tomorrow you're not waiting.

Period 1.

It's too damn early for history, Lea tells you, pillowing his head on the text in your arms. You are in the back row sandwiched between him and a slender blonde toying with a knife, slipping it between her fingers like water, like she thinks she can't bleed.

The classroom smells like dust and Lea's jacket smells like the liquor your mother spills into black forest cakes and the blonde smells like she spilled a bottle of cheap perfume down her skimpy black bodice. You are suffocating. And it pisses you off because you actually like history, even early in the morning with your droning professor, the one that's too short-sighted to yell at Lea when he places his fingers on your cheeks and tries to stretch your frown of concentration into something he finds more appealing.

Which pisses you off because Lea likes history too, when you retell it, gesturing to landmarks, on your walks through the city when your parents are too busy working to care where you are or which guards are about to thrash you for which misbehaviors.

Only this time your professor does notice, frowns and jots your names onto the parchment in front of him. You about bite Lea's fingers off. You can barely breathe.

Period 2.

Two dozen students separate you and your best friend, which does not stop him from tossing you mildly inappropriate hand signals and pointed looks whenever it strikes his fancy. The girls beside you elbow your arms and ribs when you don't respond, so you return the ones you catch with rolled eyes, scowls, and the occasional begrudging chuckle. You feel crowded.

The scientist at the podium asks your class if any of you know why the sun sets red.

This time you look to Lea of your own accord and he's already smirking back at you.

You told him once that his lion's mane of curls is the color of the sunset. You don't know what possessed you. He didn't reply, just stared at you for a while as you counted the freckles smattered across his nose like flecks of paint. You figured he didn't hear you properly. You figured he forgot.

You are tired. Lea focuses on the lecture and you listen with your chin propped on your knuckles, supported by an elbow and your eyes wide shut. This lasts about twelve minutes and then he's fashioning paper ninja stars and angling them toward your neck and shoulder blades.

Period 3.

Your literature professor asks you where Lea is with his essay. You are not in literature class at the time.

You get up without answering and scour the hallways until you find him napping on a couch in the common room, drool hanging out his mouth in a string. You pull him back to class with his earlobe between your thumb and forefinger. This time he about bites _you_.

Lea submits the paper. It's a damn good paper.

You go back to class and get a break from him. The girls in class are not aware. They talk about the way his voice thrums like guitar strings when he laughs and how his smile is white and soft like a cloud and you think that is a dumb metaphor, but you don't tell them that.

You have rolled your eyes at them in the past and they choke on their giggles like they know something about you that you don't.

Lunch.

A willow tree sleeps in the sun-drenched courtyard outside of the academy building, bordered by a hundred pink dandelion fluffs. Sometimes you eat lunch beneath it when you want to get away. Lea inevitably finds you there, friends shadowing him, mouths babbling. They settle around you like courtiers. He talks at you though you don't say much back. And they're loud and obnoxious and his shoulder rests solidly against yours.

Period 5.

Magic.

You and the other diviners are reading tea leaves, which you think is kind of a waste of time though you love the dark, bitter taste as it stings your lips.

Lea about blows up the classroom.

Again.

You help him clean up. Everybody else is tired of it. You say the tea leaves told you to. He kind of smiles though you know your joke is lame.

He makes you swear not to tell his parent's bar staff.

You swear.

You keep cleaning. The stench drags at the walls of your lungs and makes your nasal cavities burn. The sound echoes in your ears making everything a bit dimmer.

Class is over and his friends crowd around you, with Lea claiming he's going to walk you home and then bounding, with your wrist wrapped in his sun-bronzed, calloused fingers, in the opposite direction. They are rowdy and rough and ill-mannered and they would make your father narrow his eyes, lift his nose, and plead with the gods for their souls.

They give you a migraine. Lea is the loudest, the rowdiest, the least well-mannered. He knocks against you as you run through the square, shouts your name and boosts you as you scale a fence, cusses you out when you complain. You are exhausted by

Twilight.

He does walk you home—eventually—and you give him a literal and verbal shove when you reach your wide wood paneled door with the crescent moon shaped window. He grins and it makes your migraine worse.

He tries to get in your way and you shove him off and push your way inside as if anyone's waiting there for you. You say something about how you'll see him tomorrow, or maybe it's just him who says that and you agree in your head.

You shut the door.

Alone, finally.

You close your eyes and the silence seeps in.

For the first time all day you can hear your own heart beating.

You nudge open the door again and Lea stares, eyebrows up, hands half risen. You are not sure who's more surprised, you because he's stuck around or him because you opened the door back up.

You motion him inside and shut the door and he follows in silence, green eyes wide and emerald colored in the shadows. You lean against the door and he leans against it beside you. Your eyes shut and you assume his do too and you flex your fingers towards his and just breathe, and for once he is quiet.

His fingers twine with yours, rough and knobby, tree roots.

Alone, finally.

* * *

Based on the prompt "alone, finally". Was supposed to be shorter but uh. Drop me a review if you liked it:)


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